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Archive for September, 2011

My roommate loves Bill Maher. He gets tickets to the live recordings here in LA and lines up hours before the show just so he can be one of the voices in the background. He occasionally asks me if I want to join him and I usually say no. I don’t like Bill Maher. But how can that be? I am a staunch Democrat, young , Latino and gay, no less. I should be a far left liberal (or progressive) cheering Bill Maher’s politics – a man who no matter what he says is a left wing activist. But that is also not true. I am a self-described left-leaning moderate Democrat. With that alone, some of you may stop reading right here thinking that my politics are different than Maher’s. But that is not the case either. I generally agree with Bill Maher’s political ends, such as universal healthcare, the legalization of same-sex marriage and decriminalizing pot use. But I still don’t like Bill Maher.

I spent eighteen years of my life growing up in the Central Valley in the City of Visalia, located midway between Bakersfield and Fresno. I was never a farm boy. I grew up in a suburban style two-story house in a cul-de-sac. Though I didn’t grow up on a farm, I developed an appreciation and understanding (especially as I got older) of those who lived and worked in some of the nation’s most productive agricultural regions. It’s an understanding of, not simply a lifestyle but a life devoted to the cultivation of essential crops and resources. But over the course of the debate on high-speed rail (HSR) over the first leg of construction from Bakersfield to Fresno, I hate to see these local communities being pushed and misled by local city officials and executives who would throw hardworking famers under the proverbial bus because of their own intransigence. Here are four basic questions and answers on the “why” for the Fresno-Bakersfield segment of the California High-Speed Rail project.